


I Am An Honest Man

by Amemait



Category: Othello - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, GFY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:41:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because one day for English Class, we were told to write Shakespeare fanfiction for grades.</p><p>This passed, though barely. Not because the marking scheme was high or because this was bad, but because the marking teacher disagreed with my assessment of Iago's character.</p><p>Iago's an arse. on the other hand, it's Othello who kills Desdemona on only the word of a known arse. COME ON GUYS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am An Honest Man

’Tis quiet in this cell of mine. Dank and dark. There is a leak in the roof, and the rain pours through it to drip down in front of me. The bars on my window are red with rust, staining the surrounding wall, yet I know they are still strong.

I’ve attempted every way I could concoct to escape this prison – alas, to no avail.

The rain is starting to clear. The clouds disperse, promising a clear ’morrow’s morning.

Ah, yes, to-morrow.

Let me not think of the ’morrow.

Let me not think upon my fate. I say let me not!

Let me think instead of… happier moments. Good times in my life.

Not of the bad…

\--

It all started when I was six. Or maybe it was before then, but six is the first time I remember it happening.

Someone called me "Honest Iago".

My sisters and I – both long dead now of Scarlet Fever – were playing in Cousin Vincenzo’s garden. All merry and free.

Then one of my sisters, almost eleven by that point, took some of the apples from our cousin’s special tree. Vincenzo never let anyone, not even the gardeners, touch that tree, and he counted how many apples it had each morning.

Three apples, one for each of us.

Then Vincenzo came to fetch us from his garden for supper. He wanted to know where we had gotten the fruits. My sister had ordered me not to tell him, saying I’d “get into big trouble, because thou art the boy, thou art the one in charge.”

I told Cousin Vincenzo anyway. I though he should know. My sister was sent to bed with no supper, and everyone said it was a really honest thing I’d done, even though I might have gotten in trouble for it.

That’s when I realised, realised three things that would change my life.

Any person will do anything, say anything, if it will directly benefit them.

Someone is automatically trusted more if they are known as ‘honest’.

Those things, and that girls are stupid.

Not bad things to learn in one day.

\--

I met the one who would become my wife that self-same year. A little baby, cradled in her nurse’s arms.

The first thing she did when she saw me was point and laugh.

A few minutes later, she threw-up her breakfast.

In a way, our relationship did not much change from that point onwards.

\--

Ah, I hear an owl hooting. Or is it a funeral bell? I remember not the difference ’tween the sounds now, I have been alone here so long.

Or, mayhap there is no difference for me now. Each hoot brings me one moment closer… O let me not think upon’t!

The storm has returned, and there is now another leak – above my head, this one, but I shall not move.

O, if only that previous storm had struck true ’pon the Moor’s ship; I would then not be here now!

If only, if only…

This world is full of ‘if only’.

\--

If only, for example, my father had not been a drunkyard. True, I did learn much from him, but even that was mainly ‘men do strange things when drunk’, and ‘gambling when drunk is a sure way to lose a lot of money very quickly’.

Born noble, raised poor. My childhood in four words.

Four simple words…  
                                                                                                   “Thou art honest, Iago.”  
“Please call me Desdemona.”  
                                                         “Thou art a friend.”

\--

I first met her when I was eighteen. She was ten. It seems so long ago now, yet I know only eight years have passed. I was a crewman aboard the Determination, home on shore leave. Cousin Vincenzo introduced us. He died the next month, not that I think of it, stabbed and robbed not three steps from his house.

“Iago, meet Brabantio’s daughter.”

“A pleasure, my Lady,” I had muttered, barely even glancing at her.

“Please call me Desdemona.”

Thus did we become friends soon thereafter, though her father did not much like me.

Emilia and I were married four years hence from then, and young Desdemona needed a maid. Emilia started work for Desdemona, and I visited each day I was in the city. It was the perfect arrangement for remaining in contact, for when Vincenzo died I was no longer invited to many social gatherings.

Such a great pity. Fair Desdemona fell in love with the Moor. Well below her rank was he. Born a slave, raised a mercenary. A mercenary! One who fights not for honour or glory, but for money and money alone! His affiliation, sold to the highest bidder. Never trust a mercenary, for they are filled with naught but greed.

…And she did not even have the grace to tell me herself…

\--

The spot that faithless Moor stabbed me stings as the rainwater touches it. Perchance I should move?

“I bleed, sir, but not killed.”

Not yet killed.

The Moor is dead; he went ’gainst the order and so lost his life to the demons. God is in His Heaven and the Devil in His Hell.

Footsteps down the hall. ’Tis the guard, come to fetch me. My last hours are for a priest to take, absolving me of sins. Then ’twill be a herald to announce my crimes – two counts murder, mutiny, conspiracy to murder, theft, defamation; indeed, all manner of things. My last words given to a jeering crowd. A hangman to hang me; that self-same crowd to laugh at my lifeless form.

Laugh at the death of a poor noble.

And so shall end Iago.


End file.
